Matt Bruenig and Demos have thrown down the gauntlet against libertarian ideology. Trevor Burrus at Cato has picked it up. Should be worth tuning in. Matt pulls no punches. He’s emerged in the last year as one of the mediasphere’s most convincing voices for progressive ideas and policies, based (IMO) on air-tight arguments and thinking, backed by solid, well-presented facts and […]
I’ve said many times: every economic assertion should be preceded by the words “by this measure.” For big economic questions, you need to look at lots of different measures, lots of different way, to get a feel for what’s going on. This has come home to me as I’ve considered Jared Bernstein’s ongoing takedown of […]
Dan here…Via Sandwichman at Econospeak comes William Rees’s response to Paul Krugman’s post on “the prophets of climate despair”: “In theory GDP growth could continue indefinitely – if it weren’t linked to something real.” William Rees, who along with Mathis Wackernagel developed Ecological Footprint analysis, commented on Paul Krugman’s flippant slur on “degrowth” as an […]
Dan here…I am no expert of the in and outs of private money moving to renewable strategies instead of relying on fossil fuels. The branding of climate change activism as demonstrated by the march in New York City and the move to “divest, reinvest” movement of money has begun to gain more momentum. sort of […]
In a speech this week, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Charles Evans, made a case for keeping the effective Fed rate low well into the foreseeable future. He concluded… “To summarize, I am very uncomfortable with calls to raise our policy rate sooner than later. I favor delaying liftoff until I […]
Remember Iceland? During the high-flying early 2000s, its three main banks went berserk, paying high interest rates to international investors that accumulated deposits equal to more than 100% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and making loans equal to 980% of GDP. When the collapse came, Iceland took a route not taken by Ireland, […]
How many remote controls do you have for your TV? Do you care to describe the tangle of cables and wires connecting your various components? If you’re like almost everyone I know, the answers are “at least three, probably five” and “No!” Have you had a housesitter recently? How long did it take for you to […]
Post has been cut-and-paste-typo-corrected. 9/28 at 11:43 a.m. —- There’s a palpable fear amongst Kansans, all across this state, that the America that we love, and cherish, and honor, will not be the same America for our kids and grand kids. And that’s wrong. That’s very wrong. As a result, unfortunately, people are losing faith […]
Brad DeLong has a video discussing Piketty’s book. In the video, the subject of labor share comes up, which has dropped to new lower levels in advanced countries. Robert Solow tries to make an analogy for labor share being an irrelevant factor. So he describes two islands. (36 to 38 minutes in video) and asks […]